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doesn't anyone here have any experience with DOJO?....hmmm strange, to me it seems like a nice thing, maybe I'm just doing something wrong but I can't see what.
last but not least, they have a very easy to follow tutorial-

Wellllllll
thanks very much for your comments, the participation was incredible.
I am simply astounded, overwelmed with the enthusiasm, the involvement goes way beyond the expected, what more can one wish for?

Well, I for one had never played with it. So I just looked at their demos. None of the important ones worked with the Chrome browser. (Even copy/paste didn't work in their rich text editor!) So, no, I don't think it's worth messing with, for sure.

thx old Pedant,
although a negative reply, it was important for me to hear it coming from a JS expert.
I tried it in IE7 and they had some nice modules which would have saved tons of time on the layout possibilities, but there is obviously no point if the browsers arent supported.

thx anyway
Do you no of any similar,workable thing like dojo.js that I could try out?

If you like DOJO, I'd write to them and ask them when Chrome support will be complete. Given the companies funding it, I'm sure it must be Firefox compatible. Probably they do most of their work starting with Firefox. And if it works well in MSIE 7 and 8, then Chrome (and maybe Safari?) are all you need to worry about.

There are lots of other packages out there, of course. Not all do all the things DOJO does (to be fair, not all are as heavyweight, either! that's a *TON* of code!), so maybe you just have to pick and choose.

To be fair, i haven't looked at it in about a year, but it was something i followed very closely in the past.

dojo was a bit ahead of it's time imho; it's "the forgotten library".

i think it was too much for scripters to embrace and learn, especially compared to jQuery.
It's syntax is logical/semantic, but long-winded; for example: ArrayOfObjectsToArrayOfArrays...

it has a ton of low-level programming features and utils, but it's most known for it's polished GUI widgets. A schizophrenic combo to be certain. Veteran programmers dismissed it because unlike jQuery, dojo need good JavaScript skills on behalf of the programmer to make everything work the best. That mean programmers who were never crazy about JS have to learn both dojo and JS, a bummer for many.

Despite having a whole IO package, most people only used the flash storage part (which again was a little ahead of it's time), and skipped the rest. They did not build on top of dojo like dojo would like, they built around it...

A HUGE package size (100s of KBs), a complicated builder that requires Apache knowledge few scripters command, and poor documentation all contribute to it getting stuck on the launchpad.

If you are looking for things like dojo, use prototype for your programmer features, and YUI for your widgets. Neither is as rich as dojo, but both have better docs and are both more widely implemented than dojo ever will be. ExtJS and HTML5 also have good widgets, if that's all you need.

Users who have thanked rnd me for this post:

A very nice summary, rnd_me. I thought maybe it was just me and/or Chrome, but it seemed like many simple things took *FOREVER* to render. I'd suspect it's as much because of the monstrous size as anything. I admit to being pretty much a "roll your own" person, not inclined to use most JS libraries just because of their size. But every so often I'll jump on one. But not, I think, on DOJO.

Well, the frameworks like DOJO, JQuery, Prototype, MooTools... they all have advantages and disadvantages. More disadvantages, I dare to say. Contrary to the general opinion, one must learn javascript very well before using a framework. And contrary to the general opinion the frameworks are not (or they will be not, soon) fully crossbrowser. Frameworks want to be a solve for everything, but everything is always equal with everything+1 . And the main sin of a framework is that it creates a sort of supra-language over the genuine language, which is dangerous and often redundant.

thx a lot guys, thats what I call explicite help and sure 'KOR' you're right , learn the basic language and the rest will look after itself.
I realise, it is all really a simple equation: dont try to a play keyboard untill you've learnt the piano.
I certainly will when I have time, but thats my enemy at the mo. so untill then I'll just have to improvise and hope that you guys are gonna help me.

'Old Pedant' Having read your great answeres here Its doesn't seem to worth the efforts to write to dojo anymore, if their interrests were aimed at perfection, then we probably wouldn't have been talking here in the forum about the whys and wherefors.

'rnd me'
you certainly convinced me, I,m happy I didn't ask you whether ice cream tastes good or not, I'm sure I'd never have bought another one in my life :-)